Before their time

FROM a surgeon's point of view, open fetal surgery is as good as it gets. Nancy Chescheir, director of the fetal therapy programme at the University of North Carolina, admits that it isn't just Joe Public who is dazzled by this strange new contact with the unborn. "Fetal surgery is very glitzy, it's very glamorous, it's extremely exciting being in the operating room." But even Chescheir, who is entering this pioneering area, acknowledges the ethical minefield that surrounds it.

When her fetal surgery programme opens its doors at the end of this year, access will be strictly limited. Parents will have to go elsewhere for the operation the US media hailed as a miracleopen intrauterine repair of myelomeningocele, the serious spina bifida lesion in which both spinal cord and membranes protrude in a sac. As far as Chescheir is concerned, open fetal surgery is still in the experimental stage. "There ...

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